Hors Catégorie

Right now the yearly paramount in cycling sport Le Tour de France is going on and today is probably the hardest stage in the race with three extraordinary climbs. In cycling races the climbs are categorized on a scale from 4 (the easiest) to 1 (the hardest) depending on the length and steepness. And then there are climbs beyond category, being longer and steeper than usually, like the three climbs today. The description in French for such extreme climbs is “hors catégorie“.

Within master data management categorization is an important activity.

We categorize our customer master data for example depending on what kind of party we dealing with like in the list here called Party Master Data Types that I usually use within customer data integration (CDI). Another way of categorizing is by geography as the data quality challenges may vary depending on where the party in question resides.

In product information management (PIM) categorization of products is one of the most basic activities. Also here the categorization is important for establishing the data quality requirements as they may be very different between various categories as told in the post Hierarchical Completeness.

But there are always some master data records that are beyond categorization in order to fulfill else accepted requirements for data quality as I experienced in the post Big Trouble with Big Names.